The Broken Rose
by MrsJohnBender
Summary: child serices tries to put John's broken life back together with a new, rich family next door to Clair's residence but can you fix something so completely broken?


I open my eyes and to my surprise I see the floor. It's not the fact that I'm not in my bed that brings questions to me, I've woken up looking at many strange things before (my water-filled bathtub, the sky from the point of view of my roof-if you could call it that, I like to call it a half shingled half whatever is around to replace a shingle thing above our house-, on the kitchen table, and there was that one time I woke up with half my body out the door and half in the house), but it's the fact that I can actually SEE my floor.

I rotate my head just a little. I'm seeing a hell of a lot of floor for this to be my room yet there's no denying that smelly old matrice, the one purchased at a local garage sale, to be mine. I sit up and feel pain in every important muscle in my useless body. I am less then thrilled and it is not just because I am having memories of just WHY I woke up on the floor. It's because my closet, my dresser, under the bed, my floor, it's all been stripped of everything but only the special selected to stay in the hell hole of my room; all the things that are ripped or damaged to an unbelievable extreme that is.

As I walk into my living room my legs get a sharp pain as they hit the floor and then go back to being numb. I stand in the doorway, the one to my living room with a big chunk of the top part missing from a happening that I can honestly say I have no account of in my drugged out memory.

The big fat man lying on the couch takes a small moment away from his television before getting separation anxiety and returning to it. Without chancing looking away again he speaks to me. "What'ta hell ya want boy? Quit yer glarrin' and make me some damn lunch'er somethin', yer useless mother's out whorin' it up again" even at this request I don't move. Normally I would make it look like I was about to cook something up but end up leaving, it's not like he'd stay awake long enough to remember he told me to do something, but normally I have all my belongings packed safely in my room. I glare on trying to give him that intimidating and cocky look I can give everyone at school so easily. I manage looking pissed but no more effective then that.

"What is ya ignorant? Ya' suddenly become stupider? I said git the hell outta my sight and make me some damn lunch!" he shouts and I flinch. I try to play it off coolly and glare at him some more; if I glare long enough he might tell me what happened to my room without me having to work up the courage to ask myself because if I do I know I won't be able to hide the fear in my voice like my mother can.

Not that I'm saying she's amazing and courageous and all that stuff or anything. To tell the truth she's just as bad as my father. She's smaller then my father is so when she's pissed at me she waits till my back is turned to throw something at me. Sometimes something small like an apple or remote, and sometimes something more painful like a lamp or something glass. Never do I hit her back though, no matter what she tosses at me. I'm not saying I've got too much pride to hit a woman, because I don't, and I'm not saying she's stronger then me, because she's not, but my dad is, and even though any other time she's just his crack whore of a wife who pretty much sleeps with anything that has a usable cock he can still get VERY protective of her, I've learned this the hard way. Nobody hits his bitch except for him I guess.

"Ya got five minutes to say whatev'r the hell it is ya wanna say an' git yer ass in that kitchen 'fore I mow tha lawn with yer face" he says and it just occurs to me that he's slurring. Lucky me, I woke up to my drunk daddy. Something must have him super pissed because usually he's sleeping at noon, not getting hammered. Either he's pissed or he had a special errand to run in his son's room and celebrated after words with a few drinks.

"My stuff" I say plain and simple, managing to get the two words out nice and angry sounding. I guess ho-for-mom isn't the only one who can hide her intimidation when put through enough anger. Not that she even has anything to be angry at; if she wants to leave this hellhole the doors wide open, I don't have the same opportunity as her, cops tend to get extra excited when they get to bring a runaway child home. I 'spose it's because most of 'em are cold, half dead, and have a system full of drugs. It's like a police-mini-challenge. I bet they even have a high score for who returned the most half dead child to his dysfunctional family and even one for who can give the least shit about WHY said child ran away from said dysfunctional family.

"I told ya to get a job, didn't I? Well ya didn't an' ya took anotha' one'a my beers so I assured I was paid back for takin' care of yer sorry ass an' that beer" the sonuvabitch says in a snug little way. That's funny, I thought the fifteen minute soccer game between my dad's shoe and the wall, me being the ball, was punishment for that beer. If not I'd like to know why the hell my side is sore.

I want desperately to take him by the neck and throw him to the wall like he has done to me so many times. I want to drag him by the feet and throw him in a bathtub of completely frozen water and dunk his head in over and over again until his lungs feel like they are going to burst and he is ready to stop seizing the opportunities for air because at least the pain in his chest will leave (something done more when I was little, almost daily when I was eight, yet still done on the occasions I get him really pissed off and he's too tired and hot from work to do anything with his foot or fists). I want t go in HIS room and sell all HIS stuff, more then anything, I want to take the hunting gun in the cabinet, the one that still surprisingly has not made contact with my body, and shoot him-or hell, maybe me instead- in the head and just end it all.

However I am too much of a coward to do any of those tempting things so I just storm out of the front door. I decide to make an appearance in the Sunday detentions (the students in my school are split into two groups to make things easier. If you are in group one you only have group one teachers and detentions on Saturdays, group two gets only group two teachers (I wonder if group two teachers are on your back about homework as often as group one teachers) and detentions on Sunday). It's not like the teacher there will stop me, he'll probably just assume that there weren't enough Saturdays in the school year for me so they added Sundays to my punishment as well.

I use the pencil and paper handed to me to make an account of everything left to me. I can remember that pretty well; there were only a couple things and the things on my person right now. I have a few clothes, mostly shirts, my pocket knife, no scratch that, that went missing before this morning, the pencil I'm writing with that I'm surly not going to just hand back, the note cards I stole on my way in (since the ones from yesterday also just up and disappeared), cigarettes, a dollar twenty-five, and the lamp that doesn't work, never has, and I have a feeling it never will no matter who tries to fix it.

So to sum it up for you; I got shit. Yesterday when I explained to the little princess how she had everything and I had shit, well I was rich then compared to what I am now. I sort of wish I had used crap instead so I had a more extreme word to use for my current status. However, I was not smart enough to do this so I will have to refer to my current belongings as "less shit".

_"You got everything, and I got…less…shit" _somehow that doesn't sound as guilt rising. It sort of makes you feel like you've just gotten in an argument with a mentally challenged pot smoking punk who can't even describe his current status of living. Well, sort of, I know MANY words but when you are verbally fighting with someone and trying to make them feel like some little pig actually fighting with something that will never compare to them, like a blade of dead grass, using big words isn't really smart. You keep things blunt and harsh.

The group today is not even worth annoying. I look around; all of them are hard ass wanna be's, the kids with the super life, the rich parents who love them dearly, yet they wanna seem like they got the hard life so people will feel sorry for them or they can live my school life where other kids fear me and I can pretty much get away with anything I want as long as Vernon aint around. Here's a tip; if you're gonna try getting that kind of reaction don't wear expensive clothing that you replace after the tiniest stain or throw house parties at your huge acre of land or have your parents bail you out of everything and tell you how amazing you are in front of the whole damn school.

Besides, I'm not even in the mood to annoy anyone right now. For a while I'll have to steal anything I can actually get away with taking, even something as small as a paperclip. Then at least I have more shit again and sometimes more shit comes in handy. That's just the equation of life; more shit will always be more useful then less shit. This library is actually filled with shit that may not even be shit at all, now that I look around there are some actual useful stuff here.

I look around at the other students in here with me; they're all asleep. I think about forgetting about my theft rampage and just going to sleep as well. The desk may not be as springy as a bed, even my bed, but nobody is going to come in and wake me up by picking my head up by my hair and slamming my forehead into the wall. School is the best place to sleep when you think about it; you have to be here on most days anyways, it's pretty quiet, it's heated, and most importantly it's safe.

However, there's no telling when the little shitheads will wake up and there's no chance of me being able to take anything while they're conscious. Not that they'd try to stop me, I just have too much pride to go around the library and intentionally scavenge for things while others are watching me. I need this opportunity while it lasts shitty life back to its old yet still shitty condition. Maybe after I have enough stuff I'll even be able to chance running away again, after all I did say there was a lot of stuff in this room.

I go through the desks first. In my coat pockets I stuff three pens, a colony of paperclips, a whole baggy full of saltine crackers, a staple gun, a mini flashlight, and a mini screw driver to be used as a tool and maybe even a replacement for my pocket knife, the one I saved up forever to get, the one that prevented me from being robbed or possibly killed at just it's arrival into sight so many times that it ended up saving me the money I spent on it and then some. Hopefully this one will do come into the same effect.

As I'm about to leave the room I see a brand new version of that Mo-lays or whatever book I had ripped up yesterday peeking out of a heap of papers. I guess Brain felt he wouldn't be able to rent and wank off to a turn up piece of literature so he made a call to the librarian. It's brand new so it hasn't been tagged yet which is why it's not on a shelf so I figure what the hell and take it too. The last thing I take is the new door stopper, a piece of wood making a ramp big enough to hold the heavy wait of the door. I assume Dick had the shop teacher make that after I took his precious screw. I take the door stopper too, maybe I can use it in reverse as something to prevent my father from being able to open my door or at least stop him (seeing since he took the doorknob off last week).

I am pleased with my findings and decide to take that nap after all since I only got an hour of sleep due to trying to make my house livable all night and morning (yes, I, John Bender, does put on a pair of rubber gloves and I clean every corner in that damn house, not that you can ever tell. A hundred maids couldn't clean that house properly) before getting the shit beat out of me when I was finally ready to lie down and get some rest.

I could probably sleep in the detention room with the other kids and not have to worry about being woken up but both of my sides are bruised and slumping over the wooden desk just does not seem appealing to me right now. Besides, I know for a fact that if I go through the ventilation system from the janitor's closet I can get myself in the locked and empty clinic and get to lay down on one of the cots. Dick helped me learn that one, on my way to the library I got lost several times and now know how to get to many locked locations via ceiling.

I make it into the clinic with ease. This time I slide myself down from the ceiling as apposed to falling. I stop on my way to the cot of my choice and head to the nurse's desk. If I'm in here I mine as well see what else is useful. The desk is locked, of course, but I happen to be an excellent lock picker and I am lucky enough to have a paper clip on me too. Didn't I say that the smallest paper clip could even come in handy?

I stuff gauze, bacteria spray, scissors, more crackers, food from the diabetic cabinet, money from the tampon box (a tampon here will cost you twenty five cents and money is stored in a tup-a-wear and not emptied until the end of the school year and believe me, A LOT of girls get something very unexpected early or something because there is A LOT of money in there for something that costs only a quarter), a thermometer (one of the big bulky technological ones that makes your temperature appear on a screen so it's easy to read even when your dizzy), as much Advil as I can get my hands on, batteries, bandages of all sizes, and a whole stack of passes used for releasing students from school into the large rip of my coat. I also take two heating pads and plan to take the pillow and quilt on my cot too when I leave but I can just carry those.

* * *

I wake up with an hour left of detention. If I'm going to get the heating pads, quilts (I found another one) and pillows (I also decided to take the pillows from every cot) home un-noticed then I should leave now. I put the passes back first, it occurred to me that if I use too many of them and teachers get suspicious then they will talk with the nurse who will say she never gave me any excused absences from school and then they'll find out I stole them and if they find that out they'll find out that I stole everything else too. Besides, school is my escape, the only times I need to leave are when they're not letting me sleep or I seriously feel like I'm going to pass out and for those times nobody's going to stop me from just up and leaving.

On my way home I sit on the railroad tracks and take out a mini bag of chips I stole from the diabetic cabinet. It may only be junk food, but now I have enough food to satisfy me for a while if I keep it well hidden. If I don't over do it and go too often I can probably keep breaking into the nurse's office for supplies, no more then once a month though or they'll start making traps to catch me.

By the time I reach home I'm exhausted again. Fucking peachy. I take my temperature with the new thermometer and realize that I'm sick. No surprise there, I usually get sick a lot in the winter from walking back and fourth to and from school and anywhere else I gotta be. I defiantly gotta be in school tomorrow, if I don't show up the security guards will think it's because I didn't want to get in trouble for stealing the stuff. I am a delinquent after all, I'm going to be a suspect and if I knew I was going to get in trouble why go to school? Because if I do it'll throw them off. They're bound to think that I'm smarter then that, after all this is the boy who got the whole school outside for half of period seven because of a false alarm. The fire station even sent what I imagine to be all of their working trucks out and everything and I didn't even get in trouble because even though it was obviously me there was no proof. I got away with a detention, a slap on the hand. If I can get away with that they would assume I'm smart enough to not come to school when I've committed theft, after all I didn't just get away with my previous crime by being lazy. I had to leave school and make it seem like I was absent. If I was not in school I couldn't have done it, it's not like I had my attendance taken in any of the classes I hadn't shown up for.

So I decide to go back to bed. Maybe with enough rest I'll be fine for school. I rip a gash in my matrices with the screw driver and stuff everything in there. My dad would never check the matrice simply because he's disgusted by it. He hasn't touched it since the day he brought it home back when I was seven. I flip it back over, plug in one of the heating pads, close the door, and put the little wedge against my side of it so it can't be opened from his side. I lay in it with my head on one of the four stolen pillows (they're the small but plump kind) and the two quilts piled on top of me. For once in my life I'm actually in my bed and warm. The heating pad is even making my bruised back and sides loosen up and feel more like normal flesh. For the first time in my life I'm able to fall asleep within the first ten minutes of lying down.

* * *

**A/N: ...Blub I'm a fish. **


End file.
